Thursday, March 19, 2009

How was your St. Paddy’s Day? Did any little leprechauns lead you to lovely pots of gleaming gold? Today’s recipe will lead you to a pot, well a pan actually, worth its taste in gold. How does homemade corned beef hash served up with heavenly fried eggs drizzled with a golden mustardy hollandaise sound? Not quite sure? No problemo! Let me show you what I have in mind.

If you are like me, you may have some extra corned beef hanging about in your fridge. Not only did I have some left over meat from St. Paddy’s Day, but I also was in possession of a few boiled potatoes from the same meal waiting to be used up. What to do, what to do? A lovely hash sounded in order. Plus, I had just read about a mustardy hollandaise that I wanted to try, which meant that since I’d have the eggs out anyway for the sauce, I might as well fry one up, too! (Picture me wiggling my eye brows up and down!) I have such a *thing* for eggs. If I were ever stranded on an island in the middle of no where and was allowed to bring a food with me, those lovely orbs would be my first choice. ANYWAY ... back to reality ...This hash was a snap to fix. Because the potatoes were already boiled, you do have to take a bit of care when frying them that you don’t squash them. I prepared this in my handy dandy cast iron skillet, which provided great even heat and allowed the potatoes to turn a lovely golden shade in no time at all. Let’s get crackin. (Get it? Crackin? Eggs? I know. Don’t quit my day job.)

Melt the butter into the olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. When sizzling, add the onion and peppers, and sauté for about a minute or so. Add the potatoes, turn heat down to medium and let sizzle for about 3-4 minutes. When they start to look golden, add the corned beef. Stir/fold gently with a large spoon for about another 5 minutes. Done. Because the corned beef is so highly seasoned and since the potatoes were cooked with the corned beef, I didn’t add a single spice to this.

Meanwhile, in another pan, prepare your egg. I fried mine over medium, but any style, even scrambled, would work great. Need some help in learning how to fry an egg? No worries. Here’s one of many fool proof methods for preparing fried eggs. This will produce an egg where the white is cooked, and the yolk is runny. Melt a little butter or olive oil in a non stick skillet over medium heat. When almost sizzling, crack an egg into the pan. It should sizzle right up. Lift the pan off the burner, and very gently shake the pan. Hold this position for about 30 seconds to one minute. Then put the pan back on the burner, and using a spatula, slip the spatula under the egg and gently invert the egg back into the skillet. You can tip the skillet a bit if that helps. Set the pan back on the burner and turn off the heat. Let sit for about 30 seconds, and then using the spatula, invert again.Remove from the pan and serve immediately. I like to sprinkle a little bit of seasoned salt on mine just before serving.

For the hollandaise, simply make a basic hollandaise and just before completing, stir in a generous teaspoon of Dijon mustard. I actually prefer a spicy brown mustard and so that’s what I used. If you don’t have a recipe for hollandaise, there are multiple recipes on the internet for instructing how to make this delicious sauce. Don’t be intimidated. It’s not hard at all, and the results are wonderful. It reheats well, too.Leapin’ Leprechauns! This dish was utterly delightful! I know that I emitted multiple yummy noises as I savored bite after bite. Just look at these eggs!The yolks are perfect here, and don’t you just love their deep orange color? Now I know that some folks prefer their yolks cooked hard. Again, no worries. Any type of egg would work here. You could even scramble one into the hash if you’d like! Homemade corned beef hash is just soooo amazing. It’s a thrifty way of using up leftovers, and by no means does it appear to be a “left over” dish. The mustardy sauce was simply supreme, and elevated this dish from yum to WOW!This was a great way to use up leftovers from St. Paddy’s day, and definitely put a spring in my step. Did you have any leftover corned beef? What are you making with it? Oh, and like most recipes here at It's All Gouda, this is gluten free, all the way, baby! Happy (almost) Spring!

29 comments:

i love being creative with leftovers myself - you did a lovely job with this one, and what a hearty dish!sadly, in greece the name PATRICK isn't honoured - i sinmply love that name so its a shame we have no one to wish a happy nameday to on that day

There's no corned beef in the house, but I might just send the old guy out to buy some! Diced fine, I'm pretty sure I could eat this!! OMG..I WANT to eat this, even if I have to chew with my front teeth!And the instructions for cooking the eggs? I had never heard of doing it this way, but since it's obvious we both love our eggs the same way, I'm gonna give it a try!!*slurp*

I see recipes like this and they look sooooo delicious, and then I get lazy and I end up just buying a can of the premade hash, which is like the nastiest thing ever. It's so dissapointing! I really need to bite the bullet and make real, good-tasting homemade hash! This post inspires me!

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Homeschool Tips and Tools: 2010

Bananagrams! Not too long ago, my kids and I discovered a great new game called Bananagrams. Far more fast paced and loads easier to play than Scrabble, this game requires only a table top and kids to get the fun underway. Better yet, adults and kids of all ages can play together. The playing pieces come packaged in a delightful, banana colored and shaped, zippered cloth pouch. It's free formed fun, and great entertainment for the entire family.

From a homeschooling perspective, it's a great tool to segue into creative writing or story telling. My kids create their own Bananagram "puzzle" and then use the words they created to write or tell an impromptu story. Silly or serious, all type of stories are encouraged!

The book titled English from the Roots Up by Joegil K. Kundquist has rapidly become one of my favorite resources for building a strong vocabulary base for my children. This spiral bound book provides both Latin and Greek word roots that provides students with tools to help them determine word meanings. I absolutely love it, and the rapid results that I see in my children are amazing. This is way better than a spelling program; by studying word roots, my children are gaining a much broader understanding of language and the power of words. The lessons are very easy to administer, short in duration, and my kids enjoyed them.

On the writing frontier, there is a book called Story Starters, Helping Children Write Like They've Never Written Beforeby Karen Andreola that provides writing prompts in the form of partially written stories for children to complete. While I found the book to be just ok, my children love it. I read the partially written story aloud, and they write the rest. The kids really enjoyed doing this as each of them looked forward to hearing the other's completed versions. This ended up being a great experience as the kids really wanted to impress their siblings with their version, and thus put more effort into their writing.

And for the grammar enthusiast lurking inside your student, here's a great book that explains how to diagram sentences. Diagraming Sentences by Deborah White Broadwater is a 46 page workbook complete with an answer key, and is perfect for your middle schooler.

Does your student embrace Science? Do you need quality supplies to conduct more in depth experiments at home? Check out Home Science Tools. I'm very impressed with the quality of the products we just ordered. Beakers, flasks, stirring rods, thermometers, chemicals, safety equipment, and so much more can be found and ordered on their website. www.homesciencetools.com . The items we received were top quality, the customer service rep was super, and the items were extremely well packed and delivered as promised. Look out Bill Nye ... future scientists in the house!Lapbooking and Notebooking are buzz words in the homeschool community. Here are two great resources for incorporating those strategies into your learning curriculum. Big Book of Booksby Dinah Zike and The Ultimate Lap Book Handbookby Tammy Duby and Cyndy Regeling helped me enhance our homeschooling experience using lapbooks. The content found in these books enabled me to teach a group of homeschool mom's how to incorporate lapbooking into their curriculums. You'll want to laminate your copies as they will get pulled off the shelf over and over again.